Starting today, Tuesday in Washington, the internet search engine Google will sit (metaphorically) on the bench of a United States federal court.
Thus begins a historic trial, in which the company founded by Sergei Brin and Larry Page is accused of monopolistic practices. In a word, to restrict competition from other search engines, by having an excessive market share (just to give you an idea, in the United States or Spain it exceeds 90%) after stipulating commercial agreements that privilege their tool at the expense of others (like Bing or DuckDuckGo, to name a few).
It is the first monopoly trial promoted by the US Government (specifically, the Department of Justice) since the era of digitalization of the economy and the arrival of the Internet. Something that had not been seen since the case against Microsoft in 1998 for the dominance of Explorer on computers at the expense of Netscape.
The prosecution has taken three years to collect evidence to accuse the Californian company of “abuse of a dominant position”, which makes its search engine the default on most mobile phones and browsers, which constitutes a barrier access to other companies in the sector.
Google faces having to pay damages and redefine some relationships with other technology companies, such as those it has with Apple, which causes searches in the Safari browser to end up in Google.
The process can take ten weeks. In the worst case, the company could be required to divest some assets or reorganize its business. In this sense, the US Government urged the judge to carry out some “structural relief as necessary”, raising the possibility of ordering the technology giant to be broken up.
The company considers that its success “is explained by the quality of our products” and that its agreements with other technology companies are not exclusive but legitimate, because they do not prevent its rivals from developing and promoting other search engines.
However, DuckDuckGo has complained, for example, that removing Google as the default search engine on a device and replacing it with DuckDuckGo requires too many steps, leaving its market share stuck at 2.3%.
Google has already suffered fines in Europe for monopolistic practices and other violations of the law. In the last ten years, between the European Commission and the different European states, the company (its parent Alphabet) has had to pay more than 8,000 million euros, not only for having broken competition laws, but also for tax evasion. or attack on privacy law.
